West Like Lightning The Brief, Legendary Ride of the Pony Express [Hardcover]

2019 Spur Awards Finalist, Best Western Historical Nonfiction • The new definitive history of the Pony Express, illustrated with 50 images

A GROUNDBREAKING WORK. ... The first comprehensive history of the legendary transcontinental experiment in mail delivery in sixty years. —True West

This rollicking account of the daring enterprise known as the Pony Express brings its era and its legendary characters to life. —San Francisco Chronicle

Sure to stand amongst the great popular histories of the West. —Tombstone Epitaph

On the eve of the Civil War, three American businessmen launched an audacious plan to create a financial empire by transforming communications across the hostile territory between the nation’s two coasts. In the process, they created one of the most enduring icons of the American West: the Pony Express. Daring young men with colorful names like “Bronco Charlie” and “Sawed-Off Jim” galloped at speed over a vast and unforgiving landscape, etching an irresistible tale that passed into myth almost instantly. Equally an improbable success and a business disaster, the Pony Express came and went in just eighteen months, but not before uniting and captivating a nation on the brink of being torn apart. Jim DeFelice’s brilliantly entertainingWest Like Lightningis the first major history of the Pony Express to put its birth, life, and legacy into the full context of the American story.

The Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company—or “Pony Express,” as it came to be known—was part of a plan by William Russell, Alexander Majors, and William Waddell to create the next American Express, a transportation and financial juggernaut that already dominated commerce back east. All that stood in their way were almost two thousand miles of uninhabited ls1